SCRAFTON'S STORY.
Harry had not heard of him for nearly four years, had not set eyes on
him since their scuffle at the school. But only a few days later
Leonard Bickersteth had called at the flat with strange news of
Scrafton. He had never returned to the Hollies; he had disappeared from
his lodgings; it was impossible to trace his whereabouts. The motive of
his flight, on the other hand, seemed pretty clear. Mrs. Bickersteth
had been questioning the boys, with the result that Harry's charges
were sufficiently proved, as Scrafton must have known they would be,
and hence his sudden desertion. Leonard Bickersteth had proceeded, on
his mother's behalf, to make Harry an apology and an offer which did
that lady equal credit. But the younger man was too perturbed either to
accept the one or to decline the other as cordially or as civilly as he
desired. He had his own explanation of Scrafton's flight. It had been a
nightmare to him ever since. And here was the central figure of that
nightmare standing before him in the flesh, with his snuff-box in his
hand, and the old ferocious grin upon his pallid glistening face.
"Surprised to see me, are you?" cried Scrafton, taking another pinch.
"I am," said Harry, looking the other in the face, and yet reflecting
its pallor.
"You'll be still more surprised when you hear what I've come to tell
you. Ain't you going to ask me in?"
"Come in by all means, if you wish," said Harry, coldly.
"I do wish," was the answer. "Are you alone?"
"Absolutely," said Harry, as he closed the door and led the way into
the sitting-room.
"I thought you lived with your mother?"
"She is away."
"Do you keep a servant?"
"Yes."
"Not next door, I hope?" said Scrafton, tapping the wall to gauge its
thickness.
"No, at the other end of the flat; and she's used to late comers."
Scrafton glanced at Harry obliquely out of his light-blue eyes. Then
they fell on the whisky bottle, and he favoured Harry with a different
look.
"Help yourself."
Scrafton did so with his left hand so clasped about the glass that it
was impossible to see how much he took. His hand seemed bonier than
formerly, but it was no less grimy, and the fingernails were still
rimmed with black. He was dressed as of old, only better. It was a
moderately new frock-coat, and as he sat down with his glass Harry saw
that he did wear socks. His beard and moustache were whiter; they
showed the snuff-stains all the more.
It was the rocking-chair this man was desecrating with his pestilent
person; while Harry, having shut the door, had reseated himself at his
desk, but turned his chair so that he sat facing Scrafton, with an
elbow on his blotting-pad.
"I have come," said the visitor, putting his glass down empty, "to tell
you the truth about your father."
"I thought as much."
"The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," continued
Scrafton, eying the bottle wistfully. "Do you suppose now that he is
living or dead?"
"I have no idea."
"He is dead."
Harry did not open his mouth. He could not appreciate the news of his
father's death, but then he would have been equally slow to realise
that he was alive. So completely had the missing ironmaster passed out
of the world of ascertainable fact and of positive statement; so dead
was he already to his son.
"When did he die?" asked the latter presently; and his voice was
unmoved.
"On the night between Good Friday and Easter Day."
"This year?"
"No; over four years ago."
Harry leapt to his feet.
"Where was it he died?"
"At sea----"
"At sea!"
"Between Newhaven and Dieppe."
"But how--how?"
"He was murdered."
Harry seemed to have known it all along. He could not utter another
syllable. But his wild eyes and his outstretched hands asked their
question plainly.
"By your friend Gordon Lowndes," said Scrafton coolly.
Harry came down heavily in his chair, and his hands lay on the desk,
and his face lay in his hands; but he was acutely conscious, and he
heard the furtive trickle as Scrafton seized the opportunity of
replenishing his glass. The man drank. To anybody but an innocent it
might have been obvious four years ago. He was one of those whom drink
made pallid and ferocious; to get more from him while still sober,
Harry started up as suddenly as he had subsided, causing the other to
spill some liquor in his beard.
"Take all you want," cried Harry, "only tell me everything first. I
must know everything now. I have suspected it so long."
He leant forward to listen, this time with an elbow on each knee, but
with his face again buried in his hands. Scrafton kept a gleaming eye
upon him, as he dried his beard with his coat-sleeve, and supplemented
the spirit with a couple of his most sickening inhalations.
"I will begin at the beginning," said he; "but you needn't have any
fears about my not reaching the end, for I've never had less than a
bottle a night when I could get it, and the man doesn't breathe who
ever saw Jeremiah Scrafton the worse. What you have here is only enough
to make me thirsty, and I may want another bottle broached before I'm
done. Meanwhile, to begin at the beginning, you must know that it is
some years now since I made our friend's acquaintance at Richmond. We
spotted each other one night by the river, and though he was old enough
to be your father, and I was old enough to be his, I'm hanged if it
wasn't like a man and a woman! He took to me, and I took to him. We
were both clever men, and we were both poor men. His head was full of
ways of making his pile, and my head was full of one way worth all his
put together. You're a dunce at mathematics, Master Ringrose. Have you
ever played roulette?"
"Never."
"Then you wouldn't understand my system, even if I was to tell it you,
and I wouldn't do that for a thousand pounds. Lowndes has offered me
more than that for it--wanted to form a syndicate to work it--offered
me half profits; but not for Jeremiah! I'll double the capital that's
put in, and I'll pay it back with cent. per cent. interest, but I'll
rot before I do more. I told him so years ago, and I've never budged. I
never told him or anybody else my system, and I never will. I may not
live to work it now. I may never get another chance of the capital. But
if I don't benefit from it, nobody else ever shall; it's my secret, and
it'll go with me to the worm. One comfort is that nobody else is likely
to hit upon it--no other living mathematician has the brain!"
Harry could not help looking up; and there sat Scrafton in his mother's
chair, his head thrown sublimely back, a grin of exultation amid the
rank hair upon his face, and the light of drunken genius in his fiery
blue eyes. There was something arrestive about the man; a certain vile
distinction; a certain demoniac fascination, which diverted Harry's
attention in spite of himself. It was with an effort that he shook the
creature from his brain, and asked how all this affected his poor
father's fate.
"There is a weak point common to every system," replied Scrafton, "and
want of money was the one weak point of mine. Without capital it was no
use."
"Well?"
"With a thousand I'd have backed myself to bring it off; with five it
was a moral certainty; with ten a dead certainty. Now do you see where
your father came in?"
"It was ten thousand pounds Lowndes got him!"
"And twenty I'd have handed him, cent. per cent., on what he put in."
"Go on," said Harry, hoarsely.
Scrafton grinned until his yellow fangs gleamed through their snuffy
screen; he took another pinch before complying. "It's waste of breath,"
said he, "for you must see for yourself what happened next. Lowndes
knows I've been waiting all my life for a man with ten thousand pounds
and the nerve to trust me, but he comes to make sure of me before going
down to your father with the ten thousand and the dodge of making it
twenty. I'm his man, of course; but your father won't listen to it; as
good as shows our friend the door, but keeps the money, and says he'll
pay it back himself, and then fail like an honest man. Back comes old
Lowndes to Richmond, with his tail between his legs, on the Thursday
night. Next day's Good Friday, and your father spends it at
home--thinking about it--thinking about it--saying good-bye to
everything--making up his mind to fail next day. All right, I'll stop
if you like; he couldn't do it, that's all; and on the Saturday
evening, just as I was going to ask Lowndes if the crash had come, and
if we couldn't run down together and try again before it did, who
should I meet coming out of the gate but Lowndes and the man himself!
He'd caved in of his own accord. I was the very man they wanted, and in
five minutes we were all three on our way to the station. It was then
after eight, I recollect, but we just caught a fast train to Waterloo,
and from there we galloped to London Bridge, and jumped into the
boat-train as she was moving out of the station at nine sharp."
"Which boat-train?" asked Harry suspiciously. It was his first chance
of cross-examination. Up to this point every statement tallied with the
statements of Fanny Lowndes, made now nearly four years ago, but
unforgettable in the smallest detail. And for an instant he was back in
the little room at Richmond, the bright fire within, the white fog
without, and the face of his beloved red with shame and wet with agony.
Good God, what a barrier it had been! Her father the murderer of his!
He remembered that the thought had occurred to him, but only in his
wild moments, never seriously. And she must have suspected--might even
have known it--at the time!
"What did you say?" said Harry, for, in the sudden tumult of his
thoughts, Scrafton's answer had been lost upon him.
"It was the train for Newhaven, that runs in connection with the boat
to Dieppe."
"What was your destination?" asked Harry, alert and suspicious once
more.
"Monte Carlo."
"That was no way to go."
"It was an unusual way; your father insisted upon it on that account;
he was the less likely to be seen and recognised."
Harry started up, mixed some whisky and soda water for himself, and
tossed it off at a gulp.
"Now," he said, "tell me the worst--tell me the end--and you shall
finish the bottle."
"As you like," said the other. "It isn't the most hospitable way of
treating a man; but as you like--especially as there's very little to
tell. I'll tell you exactly what I saw and discovered; neither more nor
less; for, first of all, you must understand that we were all three to
travel separately. I went third in the train and second on the boat,
but they took first-class tickets right through. They were not to look
at me, nor I at them. At Newhaven I saw them, but turned my back. They
were both very quiet, and I foresaw no trouble. Of foul play I never
dreamt until Lowndes stole into the second saloon and touched me on the
shoulder. Nobody saw him, for it was a nasty night, and all but me were
sick and prostrate. But I was practising my little combination with a
pencil and a bit of paper, and I tell you his face gave me a turn. He
said it was sea-sickness; but I knew better even then.
"I was to go aft and see Ringrose that minute. What was the matter? He
was trying to back out--swearing he'd return by the next boat and face
his creditors like a man. Would I go and reassure him of the absolute
certainty of doubling his ten thousand? So I got up, and Lowndes led
the way to the private cabin your father had taken for the night.
"And a wicked night it was! I recollect holding on for dear life as we
made our way aft along the gallery where the private berths were. On
one side the rail hung over the sea, on the other a line of doors and
portholes hung over us, and underneath you had a wet deck at an angle
that felt like forty-five. It was very dark, just light enough to see
that we had the lee-side down there to ourselves. And when Lowndes
opened one of the doors and climbed into one of the cabins he nearly
fell out again on top of me. Or so he pretended. The cabin was empty. I
pushed him in and shut the door, and stood with my back to it. Your
father had vanished; yet there were his ulster and his travelling cap
on the settee; and Lowndes's teeth were chattering in his head.
"'He's jumped overboard!' says he.
"'You pushed him over,' says I. 'You may as well make a clean breast of
it, for I see it in your face.'
"In another minute he had confessed the whole thing. Your father had
been leaning over that rail, feeling fit to die, and swearing he was
going back by the next boat. In a fit of passion Lowndes had tipped him
over the side, and in the black darkness, and the noise of the wind and
the engines, he had gone down without a cry. That was the end of Henry
Ringrose. He was drowned in the Channel in the small hours of Easter
Day, four years and a half ago. Instead of a runaway swindler he was a
murdered man--and now you know who murdered him!"
Harry never spoke. His face was still in his hands.
Scrafton opened his snuff-box and took an impatient pinch.
"I tell you that your father is a murdered man," he cried, "and Gordon
Lowndes is his murderer!"
Harry looked up with a curious smile.
"It's a lie," said he. "He wrote to my mother from Dieppe."
"Show me the letter."
"I can't; and wouldn't if I could."
"It was a forgery."
"But I have seen it."
"I can't help that."
"I thought it might be a forgery until I came to examine it," admitted
Harry.
"It was one. You can only have examined the first page."
"What do you mean?"
"It was genuine; the next was not. The letter was written on both sides
of half a sheet, and the other half torn off. If you could get hold of
it I would show you in a minute."
"You shall show me!" cried Harry Ringrose. "If you prove what you
say----"
He checked himself with a gesture of misery and bewilderment. What was
he to do if the man proved what he said? What would it be his duty to
do?
He knew where his mother kept the letters she most prized, the ones
that he had himself written her from Africa, and this last letter from
her husband. He went into her room and broke open her desk without
compunction. It was no time for nice scruples on so vital a point. And
yet when he returned to the other room, and found Scrafton smacking his
lips over the tumbler that he had filled and almost drained in those
few moments, it seemed a sacrilege to let such eyes see such a letter.
Instinctively he drew back from those outstretched unclean talons; but
Scrafton only burst into hoarse laughter.
"Don't I tell you it's more than half a forgery?" cried he. "Oh, keep
it yourself, by all manner of means. I've seen it before, thank you.
But it's waste of time looking at the front page; that's genuine, I
tell you; turn over and try the other."
"I believe that's genuine too."
"Then you'd believe anything. Why, it's written in different ink, to
begin with. Hold it to the light and you'll see."
Harry did so; and the ink on both sides looked black at first sight;
but closer inspection revealed a subtle difference.
"It was begun in blue-black ink," gasped Harry, "and finished in some
other kind."
"Exactly."
"But the pen seems to have been the same."
"It was the gold pen your father used to carry about with him in his
waistcoat pocket. But it seems he felt hot when he returned to the
berth, after writing this letter in the saloon, for I found his
waistcoat hanging on one of the hooks, and the pen was in the pocket."
"You say 'after writing this letter.'"
"I meant the first page of it. The second is a forgery. Look again at
both, and you will see that whereas there is a kind of regular
irregularity about the first page, due to the motion of the boat, the
irregularity of the second is a sham. It was the most difficult part to
imitate."
Harry could see that it was so; but at these last words he looked up
suddenly from the letter.
"You speak as though you had committed the forgery yourself," said he.
"I did," was the calm reply. "Lowndes couldn't have used his pen like
that to save his life. Don't excite yourself, young fellow. I make no
secret that I was his accessory after the fact. I am going to confess
that in open court, and I don't much care what they do with me--so long
as they hang the dog who refused to give me a sixpence this evening."
He glared horribly out of his now bloodshot eyes, and took snuff with a
truculent snap of his filthy fingers.
"So that's what brings you to me?" said Harry Ringrose. "You would have
done better to take your confession straight to the police; but since
you are here you had better go on if you want to convince me. You say
my father went overboard in mid-Channel. How was it he was afterwards
seen in Dieppe?"
Scrafton leant forward with his demon's grin.
"He wasn't," said he. "_I_ was seen in his ulster, with his comforter
round my beard, and his travelling cap over my eyes. It was I who
walked into thin air, as the papers said, from the _café_ in Dieppe.
And it was in the _café_ the second page of the letter was written, as
you see it now. As your father wrote it, the letter finished on the
fourth page, the two in between being left blank. I finished it on the
second page, and then tore off the fourth. I have it here."
And he produced the greasy pocket-book which he had used as a
score-book in Bushey Park.
"Let me see it," whispered Harry.
"Will you give me your word to return it instantly?"
"My word of honour."
The page of writing that was now put into Harry's trembling hands is
printed underneath the genuine beginning of his father's letter, and
above the forgery.
"S.S. _Seine_,
"Easter Morning,
"188--
"My dearest Wife,
"Half frantic with remorse, degradation, sorrow, and shame, I sit
down to write you the last letter you may ever receive from your
unhappy husband.
"When I said good-bye to you this morning I could not tell you that
it might be good-bye for ever. I told you I was going up to town on
business. How could I tell you that the business was to take my
passage for the Continent? Yet it was nothing else, and I write
this midway between Newhaven and Dieppe, where I shall post it.
"My wife, I could not bear to give back the ten thousand pounds
that was only half enough to save us. I am going where I hope to
(genuine)
double it in a night. A man is going with me who has an infallible
system; also another man who swears by the first man, and whom I
myself can trust. I know that it is a mad as well as a wicked thing
to do. I am going to gamble with other men's money--to play for my
home and for my life. Yes; if I lose, my end will be the end of
many another dishonest fool at Monte Carlo. You will never see me
again.
"I am altogether beside myself. I am not mad, but I am near to
madness. I do not think I should have done such a wild thing in my
sane senses--and yet these men are so sure! Forgive me whether I
win or lose, whether I live or die, and let our boy profit by my
example and my end. I can say no more. My brain is on fire. I may
or may not post this. But I was obliged to tell you. God bless you!
God bless you!
"Your distracted husband."
(forgery)
"be forgotten altogether, going with other men's money! I know that
it is a mad as well as a wicked thing to do. I do not think I
should have done such a wild thing in my sane senses, but I am
altogether beside myself. I am not mad, but I am near to madness.
"Good-bye for ever. You will never see me again. Forgive me whether
I live or die; and let our boy profit by my example and my end. I
can say no more. My brain is on fire. God bless you! God bless you!
"Your distracted husband."
The devilish ingenuity of the fraud was not lost upon the reader.
Hardly a word, hardly a phrase was used in the forgery for which there
was not a definite model in the original, and the imitation was no
less miraculous as a whole than when taken word by word. The very
incoherence of the letter was one of its most convincing features; the
way in which it began by saying it might be "good-bye for ever," and
ended by confessing that it was, was just the way a maddened man might
choose for breaking the news of his terrible intention.
Judged impartially, side by side, the genuine page looked no more
genuine than the other.
The clock struck two: the younger man raised his face from a long
reverie, and there were the terrible eyes of Scrafton still upon him.
He was equally at a loss what to think, what to believe, what to do;
but all at once his eyes fell upon the "copy" on his desk; it must go
by the three o'clock post, or it would be too late for the next issue.
Mechanically he began folding up his various contributions--punning
paragraphs--four-line quips--a set of verses that he had completed. The
other set, upon which he had been engaged on Scrafton's entry, he
tossed aside, but all that was ready he put into a long envelope, which
he addressed, weighed, and stamped as though nobody had been there.
Scrafton watched him with his grinning eyes, but leapt up and overtook
Harry as he was leaving the room.
"You're not going out, are you?"
"Yes, to the post."
"What, like that?"
"Not a soul will be about, and there's a pillar just under the
windows."
"What is it you want to post?"
"Nonsense for a comic paper."
Harry held up his envelope. The other read the address, and it quenched
the suspicion in his fiery eyes, but opened them very wide.
"So you can think of your comic paper after this!"
"I must think of something, or I shall go mad."
"Well, where's another bottle of whisky before you go?"
Harry fetched one from the dining-room, and in another moment he was on
the stairs, with an overcoat over his pyjamas, and the latch-key in his
hand. His brain was in a whirl. He had no idea what to do when he
returned, what steps to take, and no clear sight of his duty by his
dead father. If he was dead, there was an end. But how could he believe
the word of that ghoul upstairs? And yet, was there anything to be
gained by his returning with the police? For the very idea had occurred
to Harry, of which Scrafton had at first suspected and then acquitted
him.
He could see his way no farther than the posting of his "copy"; that
little commonplace necessity had come as a timely godsend to him; he
only wished the pillar was a mile instead of a yard away.
As he emerged from the mansions a couple of men retired farther into
the shadow of the opposite houses; as he turned from the pillar-box one
of these men was crossing the road towards him, having recognised
Harry; and it was the very man of whom he was thinking--of whom he was
trying to think as his own father's murderer.